February 14, 2000

JOHN
McCAIN AND THE WAR PARTY

The
McCain stampede is on, even before the South Carolina election results
are in. As I predicted in my
election night column about the New Hampshire primary,

"Like
rats leaping from a sinking ship, the political hacks and neoconservative apparatchiks
who latched on to the Bush campaign because they saw Dubya as inevitable will
follow their instincts. It won't be long now before they'll be throwing their
Bushian baggage overboard and frantically scrambling to climb on the McCain
bandwagon as it rolls out of New Hampshire and on to South Carolina. See how
quickly they turn on their former conquering hero. It isn't going to be pretty."

UGLY
AND GETTING UGLIER

It
is indeed hideous how quickly and shamelessly the publicists of the neoconservative
Right are hailing the ascension of John McCain as the de facto frontrunner
in the race for the GOP nomination. Why it seems like only yesterday, as I noted
in my column, that John Podhoretz was gleefully
if implausibly proclaiming:

"George
W. Bush won the Republican presidential nomination last night in Iowa 
not because he received over 40 percent of the votes there, but because John
McCain received only 5 percent. McCain may win New Hampshire a week from today
 he has to if he's even going to go on through the end of February 
but he's basically toast."

"John
McCain will be the Republican nominee for president. Barring some really catastrophic
error on his part, he is on an inexorable path to coronation at the GOP Convention
in Philadelphia on Aug. 2."

A
FICKLE BUNCH

Podhoretz
briefly acknowledges his previous prediction with an "oops" and breezily waves
"bye bye Dubya." What a fickle bunch these neocons are! Making the case for
"Why McCain Will Smash Bush," as the headline that graced his column framed
the issue, Poddy averred that the Bush campaign "was always built on a tower
of sand"  and this might not be such a bad thing after all. Whereas before
Podhoretz was likening McCain to such phony liberal "populists" as John Anderson
and Gary Hart, now we are told that McCain's authentic populism is attracting
Democrats and independents "by the thousands." Besides, everyone realizes that
the ruthless Gore will rip Dubya to shreds in the debates, and this prospect,
along with the sin of having addressed an audience at the politically incorrect
Bob Jones University, is cited by Podhoretz as reason enough to abandon ship.

NO
TIME FOR LOSERS

But
the real reason, of course, is that it looks like Dubya is a loser  and
nothing causes a mass defection of neocons and establishment "conservatives"
quicker than the odor of defeat. For this means that the one and only goal of
this crowd  access to power  is unattainable, if their present course
is maintained, and so they are shifting gears, effortlessly dumping Dubya without
regrets or even acknowledging that this is what they are doing.

BILL
KRISTOL'S REVELATION

If
Podhoretz is a little late in jumping on the bandwagon, Bill Kristol 
editor of the Weekly Standard and the little Lenin of the neocons
 didn't waste any time. The New Hampshire vote totals had barely been
announced before Kristol was out with an op
ed piece in the Washington Post headlined: "The New Hampshire Upheaval:
Bill Kristol Declares the Conservative Movement 'Finished.'" The voters of New
Hampshire had not only rejected the Republican frontrunner, they had also ushered
in "a new politics of the new millennium." Serious stuff, but just wait: it
gets heavier. For, you see, conservative primary candidates had flopped miserably:
"leaderless, rudderless and issueless, the conservative movement, which accomplished
great things over the past quarter-century, is finished." Wow! Not only
is Bush finished, but so is the conservative movement  and Kristol,
the editor of a magazine that has ceaselessly lectured, hectored, and presumed
to lead that movement is now moving on to greener pastures.

JUMPING
ON THE BANDWAGON

In
their relentless search to be on the winning side, the Weekly Standard
crowd has jumped on the McCain bandwagon bigtime, with Jeanne Kirkpatrick and
Bill Bennett joining Kristol and his editorial sidekick, David "National
Greatness" Brooks, in hailing the McCain "insurrection." This is not just
a defection from the Bush camp, but a "Dear John" letter to the conservative
movement. Having moved from the Hubert Humphrey-Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic
Party to become ardent Reaganites in the 1980s, the neocons have been meeting
increasing resistance from the conservative rank-and-file, especially in the
foreign policy realm. The Weekly Standard, along with virtually every
neocon of any consequence, called for the spilling of Serb blood long before
the bombs began falling on Belgrade. Most conservatives, on the other hand,
took the exact opposite position, bitterly opposing that war and challenging
the globalist mentality that motivated it When a conservative Republican Congress
refused to support Clinton's Balkan bloodsports, Kristol fumed that he would
have to leave the GOP just as the neocons had once left the "McGovernik" Democracy.
Well, now it appears that won't be necessary: McCain has come riding in to save
the day for Kristol and his fellow interventionists, a man on horseback they
hope to ride all the way to the White House  even if it is over the prone
body of a decimated and badly split Republican Party.

A
LITERARY INNOVATION

Kristol
and Brooks exult in their certainty that McCain is the leader of an insurrection
that is almost fated to succeed: McCain, we are told, is the new Reagan, the
new Newt Gingrich:. Never mind that he is coming from the left, in terms of
domestic policy; instead, we are told that "the McCain insurgency is not ideological.
It does feature certain themes and principles, but they are not yet fully developed
into a governing agenda." He might as well have added: But don't worry, Senator
 we'll be more than happy to help govern your agenda. Here is an altogether
new literary genre, one peculiar to our era: the job application disguised as
an essay. Surely this is an innovation that finds its natural home in the pages
of the Weekly Standard.

HAIL
CAESAR?

While
admitting that the McCain "reform" crusade may be "demogagic and hyperbolic,"
Kristol and Brooks credit the candidate with having "reinvigorated" the concept
of "citizenship," whom they compare to John Kennedy. Their ode to McCain might
well have been entitled "Hail, Caesar!" For what they celebrate is not so much
the man's platform as the man himself. What makes this piece especially interesting
is that it so dramatically illustrates the character of the McCain movement
as a cult of personality, with all factions of the "respectable" Right and the
Left seeing their own particular visions reflected in the Great Leader. The
liberals see the anti-corporate reformer, while the neocons see the perfect
reflection of their "Big Government conservatism" as well as the virtual embodiment
of the martial virtues.

CUT
THE DOUBLETALK

It
is this last, of course, that really motivates Kristol and his crowd. All this
talk about "national greatness" and the virtues of McCain as a role model for
self-sacrificing youth, this celebration of the candidate as a war hero, is
really talking in code. Never mind all this doubletalk about "sacrificing for
a cause bigger than yourself"  what the authors of this piece really mean
to say is that this is a candidate who will not hesitate to lead his country
into war. Why don't they come right out and say it?

CULT
OF PERSONALITY

Forget
all that sanctimonious guff about "citizenship" and the "reinvigoration" of
America, it is McCain's militarism that makes the neocons at the Weekly Standard
swoon. Mixed up with the McCainian cult of personality is an unmistakable militaristic
streak that goes far beyond a (perfectly legitimate) celebration of soldiering
as a noble profession. As Kristol and Brooks put it:

"For
all his conventional political views, McCain embodies a set of virtues that
today are unconventional. The issue that gave the McCain campaign its initial
boost was Kosovo. He argued that America as a great champion of democracy and
decency could not fail to act. And he supported his commander in chief despite
grave doubts about the conduct of the war-while George W. Bush sat out the debate
and Republicans on the Hill flailed at Clinton.."

HIS
DREAM IS YOUR NIGHTMARE

This
is what the neoconservatives, the intellectual Praetorian Guard of the Republican
Party lo these many years, really care about  foreign policy. That
is why they can't stand a loser, and why they are willing to ride on practically
anyone's back in order to make it into the White House as advisors and policymakers
of one sort or another. For while the President must depend on a Congress that
often has its own ideas of how the country should be run, in the foreign policy
realm what we have is a presidential dictatorship. Ever since Truman went to
war in Korea without congressional consent, each and every President has asserted
his right to dispatch troops around the globe without so much as a by your leave
to the elected representatives of the people. With McCain in the White House
 and the neocons presumably ensconced in key policy positions  the
dream of a "benevolent world
hegemony" held up by Bill Kristol as the goal of US foreign policy in a
famous Foreign Affairs article could turn into one long nightmare.

PUSH
THAT POLL!

If
the Bush camp were nearly as opportunistic and desperate as everyone says they
are, they would attack McCain for going out on a limb and not only supporting
the Kosovo war when most Republicans  and most Americans  opposed
it, but rabidly harping on the absolute necessity of introducing American ground
troops and occupying all of Yugoslavia. Kristol and Brooks are correct that
this batty idea is what made their hero so popular initially with the liberal
media  but outside of the elites, this stance is a liability. Why don't
the Bushies bring this up with the voters? It isn't enough to call up fifteen
year old boys and tell them that John McCain is a liar, a fake, and fraud, a
"hero" with feet of clay. You have to tell that kid, in no uncertain terms,
that President McCain is going to send him off to war, to fight and die in some
godforsaken jungle  maybe Colombia, maybe some Balkan backwater, getting
shot in the name of "national greatness." Now that is the kind of "push-poll"
I would really like to see!

A
FANTASY

Or
how about a TV modeled on the one that attacked Barry Goldwater as a mindless
warmonger? ! With a voice-over giving us choice quotes from McCain's bloodthirsty
ravings on the subjects of Kosovo, and the need to confront Russia, we could
bring back that little girl innocently picking flowers in a field and then the
countdown starts: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1  KA-BOOM! That mushroom cloud should do
much to deprive McCain of any chance at a coronation.

SEIZING
THE MOMENT

The
Bushies will never bring out the big guns, in part because Bush signed
on to the Kosovo war, contrary to what Kristol and Brooks seem to imply. In
the foreign policy area, as in the domestic arena, Bush and McCain differ in
degree, not in principle. Both candidates agree that the US must play the role
of the hegemon, and that we have no choice but to follow the road to Empire.
McCain, however, represents that faction of the War Party which seems to be
in a very great hurry. With new opportunities for expansion opening up all the
time, in the Balkans, in the former Soviet Union, and especially in the Caucasus,
there is a certain sense of urgency among some to seize the moment and establish
a global order centered in the West. With the Soviet Union gone, and the lack
of any counterbalancing superpower to take its place, the US/EU alliance feels
free to rampage throughout Europe and perhaps beyond, and McCain is their man
 or so they hope. Kristol and Brooks started out by saying that the McCain
movement was not really ideological, but that two themes could be vaguely discerned
through all the bromides,: big government at home, and perpetual war abroad.
As we are treated to endless reiterations of McCain's personal "narrative,"
his life story reinvented as modern myth, the political subtext couldn't be
clearer. This year, the most militant wing of the War Party is running its own
candidate for President, and his name is John McCain.

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